SAMA Collections: Oceanic Art

Orator's Pulpit (Teket)

Iatmul people, Middle Sepik River Region, Papua New Guinea
Late 19th century-early 20th century
Painted wood, fishbone, vegetable fiber
San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of Gilbert M. Denman, Jr.
77.1025

The orator's pulpit, or debating lectern, was among the most important and prestigious treasures of New Guinea's Iatmul people. The orator's pulpit stood permanently next to the central support-post in the Men's House, and was used in the debates that were a major part of the male socio-cultural order. These debates were noisy affairs, each speaker striving to upstage the others with his theatrics. The tone was oftern strongly ironic and artificially violent. Speakers held a small bunch of "Cordyline" leaves in their hands. They either stuck the top of the lectern at each important point, or placed an individual leaf from the bunch on the pulpit to punctuate the speech. Old, traditional orator's pulpits are rare. They are powerful representations of a community's most important spirit and are central to its social life. The figure depicted here is the "wagen," a primeval creator.

Oceanic art challenges almost all Western assumptions concerning the distinctions between the material world and the metaphysical world. To the peoples of the Pacific, carvings made with human characteristics are not merely representations. Depending on their context, they may be physical containers for ancestors or actual incarnations of mythical beings. Non figurative or abstract designs are often embedded with metaphysical content and may denote specific animals or complex narratives related to tribal mythology. The task of understanding Oceanic art is further complicated by the fact that frequently the meanings of individual objects are deliberately obscured by their creators. To tribal cultures, access to the meanings of art works are typically limited to members of a particular cult, to elders, and to initiated men. In fact it is this concern for secrecy that contributes to the empowerment of the objects themselves and to the importance of those who posses their mysteries.

In New Guinea, the most powerful artistic achievements, like the Yipwons of the Alamblak people of the Korewori River, or the Mindja-ma spirit figures of the Warasei people, frequently have ceremonial functions and are often sequestered in the spirit houses like the A-frame Korumbos of the Abelam people whose roofs may reach up to eighty feet in height. Here, out of sight of the uninitiated, the tribal elders invoke the spirits of their ancestors and of the mythical beings that populate their metaphysical world.

Art is magic to the people of Oceania, and like magic, it pervades every aspect of island existence. Its expressions vary from the tattoos of Maori warriors in New Zealand to the decorative motifs on an u’u war club from the Marquesas. Whether it is a totemic figure carved on a bone dagger in New Guinea, a crocodile motif decorating the prow of a Sepik canoe, or a fernwood statue of an ancestor figure from the New Hebrides, for Pacific Island societies art has protective and evocative power that transcends its ornamental function.